In memoriam: Tessa Ader, a dedicated supporter of the arts - UVA Today

A critical assessment of the merits of a subject, such as art, film, music, television, food and literature. Reviews are based on the writer’s informed/expert opinion. Tessa Virtue delivers a powerful, emotional performance in her dance debut

a permanent home for anselm kiefer’s ‘black flakes’A monumental painting by German artist Anselm Kiefer has finally found a place large enough to exhibit it, nearly two decades after its creation. In Künzelsau, Germany, David Chipperfield Architects has completed a freestanding concrete pavilion built specifically to house Schwarze Flocken (Black Flakes), a work measuring more than eleven meters tall and seven meters wide. The museum building opened to the public on October 13th, 2026 in the sculpture garden of Museum Würth 2, and marked the painting’s first public presentation. Created in 2007, Schwarze Flocken is the largest work by Kiefer in the Würth Collection. Its immense canvas incorporates oil, emulsion, shellac, earth, and twigs, creating a heavily textured surface characteristic of the artist’s practice. The painting takes its name from a poem by Paul Celan, whose writing confronts the personal losses and devastation of the Holocaust. Kiefer’s work draws on this history through a bleak, layered composition, its physical material giving weight to the subject. The challenge of exhibiting something of this size became the starting point for an entirely new building.

MCH, the fair’s parent group, once faced insolvency and is now seeing a once-in-a-generation downturn.